The business world is getting disrupted right now in tremendous ways. Automations, messenger bots, subscription flows, all of these assets designed to make our lives as marketers more convenient are starting to remind us about the value of relationships.

It comes back to the fact that people don’t buy products; they buy promises, feelings, and experiences. As rising thought leaders, we thrive on the ability to exchange our message for the emotions our audience is experiencing or wants to experience right now.

Focus on cultivating long-term relationships with your crowd. One example we’re doing that is actually adding more fields back into our lead generation forms.

I don’t want to just get someone’s email address and think that means they’re a great fit for our message. I’d rather ask for their company name, website address, the size of their team, and what their goals are for 2019 and beyond.

This means the people who will be filling out our forms are better qualified and significantly more interested in what we have to offer than a passing interest.

High-quality relationships developed over a longer period of time are the values we’re seeing moving forward. It’s no longer speed dating your audience; it’s the long game where you get to truly connect with extraordinary people in your crowd who want to know you’re the right fit for them and that they’re the right fit for you.

Keynote Clarity for Thought Leaders is presented by Jon Cook, founder of Keynote Content. Jon and his team help thought leaders, namely speakers, coaches, and consultants, craft and share their messages to better serve their audiences. Connect with Jon and his team at Keynote Content by visiting keynotecontent.com. You can subscribe to the Keynote Clarity for Thought Leaders Flash Briefing by visiting bit.ly/KeynoteClarity and enabling it there. Then, all you have to say is, “Alexa, what’s my flash briefing?”

We all tell stories in our business. Whether we cognitively realize it or subconsciously play a specific narrative in our minds, the reality is we want to experience a story that leaves us feeling better about ourselves in each area of life.

Your audience is experiencing an unfinished story. There are people who are in pain, they’re lost, they’re confused, frustrated, even mad about where they’re at in a specific area of life, the area where you have the answers or solutions to fix their problem.

It’s like they’re experiencing a half-finished story and don’t know how to reconcile what they want with what they’re experiencing right now.

How do they want you to show up in that story? What are the best ways you can write the rest of their story that helps them overcome whatever they’re facing right now?

Your audience already has an idea of how they think someone like you can fix their problem. The key is knowing how to best show up to finish the story they’re wanting you to complete for them.

Keynote Clarity for Thought Leaders is presented by Jon Cook, founder of Keynote Content. Jon and his team help thought leaders, namely speakers, coaches, and consultants, craft and share their messages to better serve their audiences. Connect with Jon and his team at Keynote Content by visiting keynotecontent.com. You can subscribe to the Keynote Clarity for Thought Leaders Flash Briefing by visiting bit.ly/KeynoteClarity and enabling it there. Then, all you have to say is, “Alexa, what’s my flash briefing?”

Let’s be honest: being a salesperson can be so intimidating. While sales come more naturally for some of us, they’re not that easy for others of us.

Here’s one tip I’ve found to help improve in sales: record yourself giving a sales pitch. It doesn’t have to be live; it can be staged and even giving your sales pitch to an empty room.

Write out some of the best objections and scenarios you can think of to your message, and then read those objections out loud and answer them in the first take on your recording. No second chances, not do-overs. Just a one-shot chance to answer those objections.

Here’s the part that can be difficult: when you’re done, listen back to your recording and be honest with your perspective about how you sound on the recording.

Now, before you get into any type of destructive self-talk because you don’t like the way you sound on the recording or you start to think you’re not good at sales and never will be, focus on writing out the best answer you can give for those objections based on what you learned from yourself, what you wished you shared during your recording.

Those are your study notes, your cheat sheet for being better at sales. The next time you’re in a sales conversation, remember you’ve already been through the most likely objections and you can focus on serving your prospective client because you’re not worried about how your answers sound.

Keynote Clarity for Thought Leaders is presented by Jon Cook, founder of Keynote Content. Jon and his team help thought leaders, namely speakers, coaches, and consultants, craft and share their messages to better serve their audiences. Connect with Jon and his team at Keynote Content by visiting keynotecontent.com. You can subscribe to the Keynote Clarity for Thought Leaders Flash Briefing by visiting bit.ly/KeynoteClarity and enabling it there. Then, all you have to say is, “Alexa, what’s my flash briefing?”

One of the values I obsess over with my work through Keynote Content is creating the most valuable content I can for you and so many others in our audience.

That includes hosting incredible guests on our weekly podcast called Copy & Content.

What I love about this podcast is that it’s not the Jon Cook show, as in it’s not just me doing a monologue or sharing just my own ideas for 30 or 40 minutes.

Each episode features a guest who is an expert in the area of marketing, branding, storytelling, publishing, copywriting, or content creation.

We’ve had incredible guests on who share about publishing your book, building a kickass brand, crafting an amazing brand story, writing copy that’s crazy good, and I get to have a front-row seat to learn from these amazing guests.

In case you haven’t checked out our Copy & Content Podcast, you can find it wherever you find your other favorite podcasts or on our website at keynotecontent.com.

Download a few episodes and give us a test drive. If you like what you hear, share the love by giving us a five-star review, subscribing, and sharing it with your crowd.

Be careful though, the Copy & Content Podcast is only for rising thought leaders who actually give an ‘ish’ about their audience, someone like yourself. Check out Copy & Content today!

Keynote Clarity for Thought Leaders is presented by Jon Cook, founder of Keynote Content. Jon and his team help thought leaders, namely speakers, coaches, and consultants, craft and share their messages to better serve their audiences. Connect with Jon and his team at Keynote Content by visiting keynotecontent.com. You can subscribe to the Keynote Clarity for Thought Leaders Flash Briefing by visiting bit.ly/KeynoteClarity and enabling it there. Then, all you have to say is, “Alexa, what’s my flash briefing?”

LinkedIn carries so much potential. It’s one of the largest search engines in the world with carefully curated profiles and tiered connections with over half a billion active users.

And yet, there are so many speakers, coaches, consultants, and other rising thought leaders who don’t leverage the full power of LinkedIn.

It’s the equivalent of taking a Ferrari to get groceries. Yes, it gets the job done, but it’s a gross underuse of its full potential.

If you want to start making the most of your time on LinkedIn, become more familiar with the Advanced Search feature. In the main search bar, you can select between People, Jobs, and Content.

By clicking on any one of these, we’ll take People as an example, it opens up a set of new search filters such as degrees of connection, such as first-degree, second, or third degree, sorting by location, connections of another specific person on LinkedIn, industries, past companies, language, education, titles, and even past work experiences.

Sort and curate prospective contacts from that list so you can start reaching out to them with a personalized message. It means you can more strategically build your network and start serving more connections as you actively engage on LinkedIn.

Keynote Clarity for Thought Leaders is presented by Jon Cook, founder of Keynote Content. Jon and his team help thought leaders, namely speakers, coaches, and consultants, craft and share their messages to better serve their audiences. Connect with Jon and his team at Keynote Content by visiting keynotecontent.com. You can subscribe to the Keynote Clarity for Thought Leaders Flash Briefing by visiting bit.ly/KeynoteClarity and enabling it there. Then, all you have to say is, “Alexa, what’s my flash briefing?”

A few years ago, a rising basketball prospect was told people were saying he was the next Michael Jordan.

I love the young superstar’s response, “I don't want to be the next Michael Jordan, I only want to be me.”

His name? Kobe Bryant, who eventually became one of the most prolific scorers in the history of the NBA.

Each of us sees others who inspire us, even those whose message we would love to embody.

If you’re a speaker, you may dream of being the next Tony Robbins. If you’re an author, you may love the idea of being the next Brené Brown. If you’re a marketing specialist, maybe you so badly want to be seen as the next Gary Vee.

The world doesn’t need the next Tony Robbins or Brené Brown or Gary Vee. What it needs is the first you.

This isn’t a woo-woo message; this is an encouragement for you to simply be yourself. You have so much greatness and potential built into you that’s just waiting to come out and rock someone’s world.

Trying to be someone else will only rob the world of the extraordinary message you were born to embody.

Don’t try to be the next so-and-so. Be the first you, and rock who you are for the world to see.

Keynote Clarity for Thought Leaders is presented by Jon Cook, founder of Keynote Content. Jon and his team help thought leaders, namely speakers, coaches, and consultants, craft and share their messages to better serve their audiences. Connect with Jon and his team at Keynote Content by visiting keynotecontent.com. You can subscribe to the Keynote Clarity for Thought Leaders Flash Briefing by visiting bit.ly/KeynoteClarity and enabling it there. Then, all you have to say is, “Alexa, what’s my flash briefing?”

If you’ve ever seen the movie “Jerry Maguire”, then you remember the scene early on where Tom Cruise’s character has an epiphany. In the middle of the night, he starts rethinking his entire approach to business and crafts his Manifesto of sorts.

And, he prints off dozens of copies and distributes it to every person in his company overnight for them to read.

The next morning, he sees that his manifesto of sorts shook the status quo of his company.

He loses everything, but it was the start of him holding onto what he knew was worth fighting for.

What’s your Manifesto? What’s the line in the sand you’re willing to draw and say, “This is what we can’t stop thinking about and is so important to us that it’s the hill we’re willing to die on.”

Our team at Keynote Content helps clients create their Manifesto. This becomes their guiding lens as a speaker, coach, or consultant for how they want to show up in the world around them.

If you’re ready to draw a line in the sand for your industry, if you’re fired up and want the world to know what matters to you, then send me an email [email protected] to start a conversation today.

Keynote Clarity for Thought Leaders is presented by Jon Cook, founder of Keynote Content. Jon and his team help thought leaders, namely speakers, coaches, and consultants, craft and share their messages to better serve their audiences. Connect with Jon and his team at Keynote Content by visiting keynotecontent.com. You can subscribe to the Keynote Clarity for Thought Leaders Flash Briefing by visiting bit.ly/KeynoteClarity and enabling it there. Then, all you have to say is, “Alexa, what’s my flash briefing?”

How many half-done manuscripts are sitting on your computer? How many unfinished drafts are waiting in your drafts folder for your blog? How many unreturned emails are waiting for you to say “Yes!” to a great opportunity for your business?

Each of these are collecting the proverbial dust - they’re just waiting for you or someone else to come by and either put them out of their misery or complete them.

Finish what you started. That one book you wanted to be 60,000 words long and it’s only at 40,000 words? It’s okay if you wrap up your book at 40,000 words. You can publish now and always add onto your book later.

Whatever’s holding you back, whether it’s self-doubt, procrastination, or just plain laziness, block out time this week to just get it done. Ignore the unimportant for even a few hours and get it done.

You will feel a sense of accomplishment knowing that one draft that’s been collecting dust is now free to be shared with the world around you.

What’s one thing you’ve been working on for far too long that you can finish and launch this week? That’s your mission: get it done!

Keynote Clarity for Thought Leaders is presented by Jon Cook, founder of Keynote Content. Jon and his team help thought leaders, namely speakers, coaches, and consultants, craft and share their messages to better serve their audiences. Connect with Jon and his team at Keynote Content by visiting keynotecontent.com. You can subscribe to the Keynote Clarity for Thought Leaders Flash Briefing by visiting bit.ly/KeynoteClarity and enabling it there. Then, all you have to say is, “Alexa, what’s my flash briefing?”

There’s a poster on my office wall that I look at every morning. It’s Teddy Roosevelt’s speech called “The Man In the Arena”.

Roosevelt highlights the one who risks it all, who actually gets in the arena of life and dares to live and experience great achievement.

Towards the end of the speech, Roosevelt makes the contrast of the person in the arena with the ones who mock his failures, the ones sitting in the seats.

They haven’t risked anything. These are the ones Roosevelt calls the “cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”

There are people in your life who are ready to mock your message.

They range from family members who don’t understand what you’re doing to complete strangers online who you will never meet in person and don’t know a thing about you.

These are the cold and timid souls in your life. They don’t know what it’s like to write a book. They don’t know how hard it can be to fill a mastermind group.

And, for many of them, they never will know that success or the taste of failure because they’re too scared to get out of their seats and step into the arena to risk it all for the sake of creating something extraordinary.

Why would any of us give them any of our time? We’re too busy fighting for what we know to be good and true and right and worth pursuing in life.

Keynote Clarity for Thought Leaders is presented by Jon Cook, founder of Keynote Content. Jon and his team help thought leaders, namely speakers, coaches, and consultants, craft and share their messages to better serve their audiences. Connect with Jon and his team at Keynote Content by visiting keynotecontent.com. You can subscribe to the Keynote Clarity for Thought Leaders Flash Briefing by visiting bit.ly/KeynoteClarity and enabling it there. Then, all you have to say is, “Alexa, what’s my flash briefing?”

One of the most gripping sonnets of poetry I’ve ever encountered is from Walt Whitman’s poem entitled “O Me! O Life!”

It’s in this poem that Whitman poses the question of what good is life, what is this great purpose for us as humans to toil and tread in this life.

And the answer, “That you are here—that life exists and identity, That the powerful play goes on, and you may contribute a verse.”

Today is about your contribution to the world around us. What is the verse you are writing with your message, your books, your talks, your trainings, and your content?

Life is far too short and far too fragile for us to simply make money. It is our sacred responsibility to make an intellectual contribution to the world around us.

What is your verse? What is the lasting contribution that those around you recognize as your great gift? And, how do you add even more meaning to those around you?

That is your verse. That is your legacy. This is your extraordinary moment of impact, and I can’t wait to see what you do next.

Keynote Clarity for Thought Leaders is presented by Jon Cook, founder of Keynote Content. Jon and his team help thought leaders, namely speakers, coaches, and consultants, craft and share their messages to better serve their audiences. Connect with Jon and his team at Keynote Content by visiting keynotecontent.com. You can subscribe to the Keynote Clarity for Thought Leaders Flash Briefing by visiting bit.ly/KeynoteClarity and enabling it there. Then, all you have to say is, “Alexa, what’s my flash briefing?”